There are some that managed to mod their BIOS and got some NVMe drives to work, however, none of them got them to work properly reporting speeds well under the 2200MB/S of the AHCI M2. They got to like 800MB/s which is barely better than a 2.5 inch sata drive. I had the same with a G751 Laptop. M2 outdated in less than 6 months. That first wave of M2 PCie drives was short lived when the NVMe was released. Your manual doesn't differentiate because at time of release NVMe protocol didnt exist. Its reference to PCIe is the AHCI M2. All products released after, Z270 and up, specifically state NVMe.
I hate being the bearer of bad news but at least I saved your hair!
I hate being the bearer of bad news but at least I saved your hair!
You would be better off hunting down an SM951 AHCI. The SATA M2 offers no performance increase over the 2.5 inch variety.*
Not true, a bench from the Samsung 960 PRO 1TB:
It's a M.2 NVMe socket in a Z170 MOBO
It's a M.2 NVMe socket in a Z170 MOBO
Well, I was an early NVMe drive adopter and Intel DC P3700 SSD was one of the first NVMe PCIe 3.0 x4 drives launched.
It was launched around June 2014 (yes 2014!) and in September same year I received one that was imported from an USA dealer.
The DC P3700 is an HHHL device, and I installed it in my Rampage V Extreme mobo (launched around September/2014) and to my very surprise, it was detected in the bios like it was an “generic” AIC card, with an PCIe 3.0 X4 connection!
Seeing that I tried to install the Windows 7 OS, and to my even bigger surprise, it was installed without any glitch, and I ended with a bootable NVMe drive in my X99 Rampage:
The Rampage had an M.2 socket, but at that time M.2 NVMe PCIe 3.0 x4 drives were not easily found.
So, the X99 chipset accepts a bootable NVMe drive and also most Z170 (one year more recent than X99) boards accept that kind of drives, independent of its launch date, except perhaps the cheaper boards.
The Z170 chipset was released around August 2015 and my build with ASRock Extreme7 with Samsung 950/960 PRO drives was finished in October, so the Extreme 7 was launched more or less simultaneous with all other Z170 boards.
And the “Ultra M.2” socket was an ASRock merchandizing way of saying that the M.2 socket was a PCIe 3.0 x4 connection, like all other M.2 connection in Z170 boards, different from, for example, Z97 M.2 that was PCIe 2.0.
I think that all M.2 sockets from Z170 boards up now, in all ASRock motherboards are called “Ultra M.2”, and it’s nothing “special”.
I tested Samsung 950/960 drives in several conditions of operation and cooling with infrared camera, and the photo shows one situation.
Going to the OP problem, the board Manual and Specs say specifically that it supports M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 drives, so it’s possible the problem is a configuration one.
It was launched around June 2014 (yes 2014!) and in September same year I received one that was imported from an USA dealer.
The DC P3700 is an HHHL device, and I installed it in my Rampage V Extreme mobo (launched around September/2014) and to my very surprise, it was detected in the bios like it was an “generic” AIC card, with an PCIe 3.0 X4 connection!
Seeing that I tried to install the Windows 7 OS, and to my even bigger surprise, it was installed without any glitch, and I ended with a bootable NVMe drive in my X99 Rampage:
The Rampage had an M.2 socket, but at that time M.2 NVMe PCIe 3.0 x4 drives were not easily found.
So, the X99 chipset accepts a bootable NVMe drive and also most Z170 (one year more recent than X99) boards accept that kind of drives, independent of its launch date, except perhaps the cheaper boards.
The Z170 chipset was released around August 2015 and my build with ASRock Extreme7 with Samsung 950/960 PRO drives was finished in October, so the Extreme 7 was launched more or less simultaneous with all other Z170 boards.
And the “Ultra M.2” socket was an ASRock merchandizing way of saying that the M.2 socket was a PCIe 3.0 x4 connection, like all other M.2 connection in Z170 boards, different from, for example, Z97 M.2 that was PCIe 2.0.
I think that all M.2 sockets from Z170 boards up now, in all ASRock motherboards are called “Ultra M.2”, and it’s nothing “special”.
I tested Samsung 950/960 drives in several conditions of operation and cooling with infrared camera, and the photo shows one situation.
Going to the OP problem, the board Manual and Specs say specifically that it supports M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 drives, so it’s possible the problem is a configuration one.
